The use of adhesives for securing disposable absorbent articles for personal hygiene is well known in the art. In particular, the use of hot melt and emulsion-based adhesives is general technical standard. The application of emulsion-based adhesives onto the backsheets of absorbent articles for garment fastening is for instance known from SE-A-374,489. The use of hot melt adhesives for this purpose is for instance described in EP-A-140,135 or in WO 00/61054.
In the recent time a significant change with respect to the clothing habits of women could be noticed. An increasing share of especially younger women does not wear cotton panties anymore, which were the standard of the last decades, but more and more tends to wear panties consisting of a particular synthetic fabric material, which is commonly referred to as “micro-fibre”.
Micro fibres are one of the recent major developments in the fabric industry. These fibres conventionally have less than 1 denier and a diameter in cross section of conventionally not more than 10 μm. Soon after their occurrence on the market micro fibres have found use in especially the clothing industry, where they are used to form fabrics having unique physical and mechanical performance, such as luxurious look and feel due to the fact that microfibres are even thinner than silk, together with very good strength, uniformity and processing characteristics. The resulting very fine and close woven and knitted fabrics are characterized by soft handle and breathability. Due to this, microfibre fabrics are also used for the production of underpants for women, especially fashionable ones for younger women.
Microfibre fabrics have very different physical characteristics compared to conventional cotton fabrics. This especially applies to hydrophobicity, which is higher for microfibres and is oftentimes even increased by the treatment of the microfibres with fluoropolymers, silicones, microwaxes and the like. Thus, unlike conventional cotton garments, microfibre garments are provided with a substantially hydrophobic surface. Furthermore, the density of the fabrics made of microfibres is significantly higher compared to those made of cotton. As a consequence, the void space between the individual microfibre filaments is much lower compared to the void space in cotton fabrics. Because of the aforementioned characteristics currently available conventional adhesives for fastening absorbent articles, such as sanitary napkins and panty liners, to garments do not work satisfactory for microfibre garments. It has been observed that the bonding forces the panty fastening adhesives (hereinafter PFAs) used in commercially available absorbent articles for personal hygiene (e.g. feminine hygiene) are able to deliver on microfibre garments are by far too low for reliable attachment of absorbent articles to such microfibre garments, especially under stress conditions, such as for instance during physical exercise and the like.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an absorbent article with a PFA, which is capable to provide secure attachment of the absorbent article on microfibre-based garments.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an absorbent article with a PFA having improved garment compatibility by being capable to provide secure attachment of the absorbent article on all kinds of garments, particularly cotton-based garments and microfibre-based garments.